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So, for one kind of "loner", the psychopaths with their psychopathy, as they relate to general human society and culture: - do psychopaths prey on and drag dow

So, for one kind of "loner", the psychopaths with their psychopathy, as they relate to general human society and culture: - do psychopaths prey on and drag down society in most circumstances until there's an "evolutionary bottleneck" and they're the only ones with the will-to-power and ability to bring a "remnant" portion of humanity through dire circumstances that would otherwise lead that portion perishing? ... are they the failsafe? - is psychopathy an emergent always-negative phenomenon that arises randomly once in a while as a result of random couplings among a pool of people on whom not-quite-psychopathic-behavior-derived-from-genetic-traits confers survival benefits and perhaps overall good to society? - or are psychopaths on overall good for society? do they always confer benefit even though we perceive them negatively? - other alternatives? [edit: punctuation]

leetcrew 7y ago
I read a game theory paper a while ago (can't find a link, but maybe someone will remember it) that suggested a stable small population of defectors (ie, psychopaths) does confer a benefit to the overall group in a cooperative public goods game. if the group becomes accustomed to having zero defectors (ie, excessively trusting), the spontaneous emergence of even one defector will wreak havoc. if there are too many, the whole thing falls apart because there is no cooperation. so the small population of defectors provides something like immunity to the whole group. could just be a consequence of the model they chose, but interesting to think about nonetheless. I'd be very grateful if someone could remember the name of the paper!
0134340 7y ago
Speaking as someone who used to worry about people so much, even those large degrees from my circle, that I'd drag myself down to very depressive episodes, I can see how some amount of psychopathy would be selected evolutionarily. Besides that, any work where you're dealing with people in pain such as a soldier, police, medics, etc, it's not often beneficial to be squeamish to others' pain, especially as a medical professional since the pain (negativity) you induce will often have positive effects. Perhaps psychopathy is just an extremely selective form of this.

leetcrew 7y ago

I read a game theory paper a while ago (can't find a link, but maybe someone will remember it) that suggested a stable small population of defectors (ie, psychopaths) does confer a benefit to the overall group in a cooperative public goods game. if the group becomes accustomed to having zero defectors (ie, excessively trusting), the spontaneous emergence of even one defector will wreak havoc. if there are too many, the whole thing falls apart because there is no cooperation. so the small population of defectors provides something like immunity to the whole group. could just be a consequence of the model they chose, but interesting to think about nonetheless. I'd be very grateful if someone could remember the name of the paper!

0134340 7y ago

Speaking as someone who used to worry about people so much, even those large degrees from my circle, that I'd drag myself down to very depressive episodes, I can see how some amount of psychopathy would be selected evolutionarily. Besides that, any work where you're dealing with people in pain such as a soldier, police, medics, etc, it's not often beneficial to be squeamish to others' pain, especially as a medical professional since the pain (negativity) you induce will often have positive effects. Perhaps psychopathy is just an extremely selective form of this.